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SWG
Susanna W. Gold, Ph.D.
Curator • Art Advisor • Art Historian
Newly available to collectors:

Moe Brooker (1940-2022), Almost There, 1982
pastel and mixed media collage on paper
30" x 22" framed to 37" x 28.75"
signed and dated lower right
$9,000
Floated on white matboard and framed in a contemporary, narrow natural wood frame under glass.
Excellent condition.
Illustrated in Each In Their Own Voice: African-American Artists in Cleveland, 1970-2005
Exhib cat, Cleveland State University Art Gallery, Jan 23 – Mar 7, 2009
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610-368-6927
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with inquiries
Philadelphia artist Moe Brooker (1940-2022) began to find his creative voice in the late 1970s, establishing the visual motifs and techniques that continued to feed his work throughout his career. Jazz music, narrative within abstraction, and color became consistent concerns for Brooker. The pulses, rhythms, and energies that infused his work developed into his own, personal aesthetic language that he considered an extension of himself. Brooker worked with this aesthetic language to share his thoughts and ideas by making them visible: “That is what my work is about, ‘making visible’. And that making visible has everything to do with who I am, what I am, [my] influences, perceptions that I have and that I put down on canvas or paper.”
Much of what Brooker shares with his viewers incorporates sheer pleasure and joy: “I am interested in the element of surprise in my work. I don’t want you to be able to say that you know what’s going to happen when you see it. I want you to be surprised, and I want to make you smile down inside. Why do I want to make you smile? Because life is tough. What is it that lets you survive? There is something deep down inside of you – that’s a joy that you have. Nobody can take it away from you. I want my paintings to offer the opportunity to find that sense of joy inside yourself when you look at them.”
Brooker studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), and the Tyler School of Art (BFA, MFA, and Rome campus study abroad). He was a life-long educator, with teaching appointments around the nation, most recently at Moore College Art and Design where he was appointed the Penny and Bob Fox Distinguished Professorship, the College’s first Endowed Professorship. Brooker also taught at the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina, Parsons School of Design, PAFA, Tyler, and the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he was the Black day school faculty member. It was while Brooker was teaching at the Institute that he created Almost There, 1982.
Brooker’s works can be found in the permanent collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, Hampton University Museum, Philadelphia Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Woodmere Art Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, African American Museum of Philadelphia, Musée des Beaux-arts de l’Ontario, Georgia Museum of Art, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of the Château de Monbéliard, Spritmuseum in Stockholm, LaSalle University Art Museum, as well as many private and corporate collections.



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